HP Z400 + Xeon W3670 compatible/overclocking - under $100 (updated)

bhogervorst

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Hello all you people of Toms Hardware.

So to preface this, I know this whole LGA 1366 Xeon thing has been covered to death on here, as it's very popular. I know this thread is going to sound a lot like many other threads from people asking similar questions. However, I haven't found anyone who's succeeded with the configuration i'm looking at, doing what I'd like to do.

Okay, so here's my situation. I have a $100 budget (+-$10) for a board and CPU. I'd like to get the most performance for my money, and i'm willing to buy used on eBay. I've settled on the LGA 1366 platform because of their 6-Core Xeons and support for DDR3 on the cheap. Old OEM server boards are what I'm looking for.

Ultimately, I would like to have a 6-Core machine that can do video editing without suffering too much in games, due to the historically mediocre Xeon clockspeeds compared to their i7 counterparts. I know that for gaming, I can get a 1st Gen i7 but I'm set on the 6-Core Xeons. So here's what I've come up with:

Motherboard:
HP Z400 Gen2 (586968-001) X58 Chipset
(2010 refresh aka Gen2)
~$40 on eBay.com

CPU:
Intel Xeon W3670 HT 6-Core 3.2-3.5GHz
Supposedly unlocked
~$40 on eBay.com

Other Accessories:
~$25 for USB3.0 and SATA 3 PCI-e Cards

So those roughly fit within my budget. The W3670 is also on the Z400 Gen2 support list, based on this specsheet.

I do have a couple of concerns though regarding RAM, a cooler and a power supply. I'm using a Corsair Builder 600W PSU, 16GB of Unbuffered standard DDR3 and a CM Hyper 212 Evo. I've heard rumors of the Z400 only supporting ECC, as well as requiring a custom cooler. I also know for a fact that the 24-Pin ATX power connector will require rewiring which is why I've also added a 24-Pin extender cable which I can mod to my list of parts. The 212 Evo supports LGA 1366 but I'm not 100% sure it will support the Z400, and I don't know about the RAM.

I keep seeing people saying that the Xeon W3670 is unlocked for overclocking too. According to this, the Z400 motherboard has the X58 chipset which, on a non OEM board, would be a nice recipe for overclocking. This is an HP workstation board though, and I know well enough that it won't support overclocking out of the box through the BIOS.

Unfortunately, I don't have the money to burn on a $100+ ASUS Overclocking board or a Xeon W3690 and I'd like to overclock if at all possible. I've heard of people overclocking their Xeon W3680's to 4GHz+ using the Z400 board and ThrottleStop because it has the X58 chipset, but I don't know if that's reasonable or reliable (thread: here.) I'm fine with FSB tuning using software if I can save some money. I'm really hoping to be able to accomplish at least something in terms of a clock speed boost (Like this guy), since I know the Xeon W3670 can do it on a good motherboard.

So here's my question:
Has anyone tried overclocking the Xeon W3670 on the Z400 motherboard via ThrottleStop? Will my Corsair 600W PSU, 16GB of DDR3 and Hyper 212 evo be compatible, even if they might require some modding?

I would appreciate any information I can get,
Thanks!
 
Solution
I think this will answer your questions.
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/throttlestop-overclocking-desktop-pcs.235975/
Sorry for the late reply. This didn't match any of my followed tags.
The W3670 is not one of the unlocked CPUs.
Yea when you go with most OEM stuff that runs Xeons they are NOT ATX Compatible and even rewiring doesn't always work. You would be better off finding a standard motherboard and not a OEM motherboard. That will give you a LOT more room for compatibility and putting what you want in there without restrictions. And Xeons I think just become overclock able in the last gen or something like that but only on a select few.

Xeons are not made to be pushed to their limits. they are designed to run fast and stable as anything can ever be.
 

bhogervorst

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drtweak and t53186

In the traditional sense, OEM components are something we would stray away from in terms of ANY sort of tuning or mods of any type, you both are correct there without a doubt.
I completely understand that Xeons are not meant to overclock and most don't.

However, I stated a couple of things in my original post:
(1.) I have $100 to spend, period. No more than that. I'm trying to get the best performance for my money here, using the LGA 1366 platform.
If you look for "X58 overclocking motherboards" on eBay, you'll find the cheapest thing is around $70, and anything from ASUS is in the $150+ range. Buying a non-OEM board is absolutely not possible for me. Trust me, if I could I would. This leaves me with an OEM board, and buying a chip that has a high stock clock out of the box OR some kind of overclock. Of course this lead me right to the Z400 board which has an X58 chipset, even though it's BIOS locked. The Xeon W3690 has a 3.7GHz boost (or something like that) but it's currently over $110 alone, even used.

It's VERY possible to overclock a Xeon of the right type in a Z400 board using an FSB or QPI based tweaking software like ThrottleStop, several people have gotten their Xeons as high as 4.5GHz using this method.

(2.) The Z400 board does NOT use a standard ATX power connector, thus my PSU would not work unless modified - at least it appears.
However, many people have swapped the HP Z400 board into standard ATX PC's because of it's cheap price, and DIY adapters are common. I'm 99% sure I can make one using a readily available wiring diagram and some common sense. I have no issues with doing the research and taking my time, and I'm familiar with wiring.

drtweak and t53186, I do not in any way mean to disregard your advice, but the information you've provided is not as applicable to the W3670 + HP Z400 Gen2 combo I'm working with here. I've done my research and I know what these components would be compatible. What I don't know is what they're capable of together after some tuning.

As I stated in my question, what I am looking for is information specifically pertaining to the actual process of overclocking the W3670, and what results people had doing it. I also was less than sure about what success I would have installing my 212 Evo and unbuffered non-ECC RAM.

I may very well be looking at this the wrong way, so I'll keep an open mind to constructive criticism of my idea. Please give me your thoughts on this.

Thanks!

 

bhogervorst

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william p,

No worries, your DMs helped me a huge amount. I've since bought and installed a Z400 board and a W3670.
I'll address the issues and misconceptions of this setup for those who will try to replicate it and those who doubt it.

  • ■ The motherboard, though on the large side, fits into my ATX Case (a Phanteks Eclipse P400 TG) with the only issue being that some of the holes didn't line up with the case standoffs, which I knew about before. I simply removed the standoffs and it worked fine. I even cut out some DIY motherboard armor for it using black matte ABS plastic.
    ■ Power supply wiring is not an issue as long as you know what you're doing. It was a simple matter of buying a $4 24-Pin extender and wiring two wires (3.3v and 5v) to a 12v wire from the 24-Pin or a molex plug. Mine took me 10 minutes to complete and it worked without issue. One thing I noticed was that when the two modified wires were not connected at all, the system would POST but would give a memory error (5 beeps).
    Image: https://www.tonymacx86.com/attachments/pinout-sxs-png.161548/
    ■ I realized after I purchased my W3670 that it was not one of the unlocked CPUs (stupid of me, I know). I've already ordered a W3680, which should overclock decently. I'll update this when I get it. Please note though, that this puts the total budget for my project at $125. I bought my W3680 on sale for $60 but It sells for around $75 currently, so the total would be more like $140 for anybody else.
    ■ My $140 budget included a USB3.0 PCIe card, a SATA 3 PCIe card and the 24-Pin adapter. The USB3.0 card works great and even includes a front panel plug. The SATA 3 card was a huge flop and wouldn't allow me to boot into the Windows installer. It cost me hardly anything though, so that's not a huge loss, and I just ended up using the onboard SATA 2 headers. A better SATA 3 PCIe card would probably solve this issue.
    ■ Cooling the processor with the CM Hyper 212 Evo was not exactly plug and play, and this did come as a bit of a surprise. I needed to grind down some ridges on the OEM socket holder bracket on the back of the board to fit the Intel mounting bracket for my 212 Evo. Thankfully I have access to a metal grinder, and with some time I was able to grind down the ridges enough to fit the cooler. After that it was smooth sailing. Temps are around 30*c idle and 55*c at full load, while running one fan on the cooler. This is a huge upgrade from my 87*c FM2 Athlon at 4.4GHz.
    ■ Performance is pretty great. In gaming, the low stock clockspeed of 3.2GHz is a weak point but the overclock should help this with the W3680. My Cinebench multithreaded score was around 750 cb. I don't play a ton of games, but if I did, my 1050 Ti would be my bottleneck for sure.
Anyways, thanks william p for the links and advice. I'll update this with my overclocking results when I get my W3680.
 

bhogervorst

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Okay, I'll try and post my overclock results on there when I get my W3680. The Z400 does seem very ATX friendly, at least compared to the T3500. The T3500 board and systems in general are cheaper but for those who want to use this setup in a nice case like mine, the Z400 is pretty much the only good option.

- bhogervorst
 

bhogervorst

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I've already got a W3670 and Z400 board in my system right now. I've ordered a W3680 so I can overclock and i'll just sell my W3670 when I replace it. I know the W3500 series chips are much cheaper and are also unlocked but I want the 2 extra cores from the W3600 series for content creation and multitasking.

I'll provide my overclocking results when I get the system running.

I checked out some of those Dell XPS boards you suggested but they're not much cheaper than the lower end overclocking X58 boards from ASUS, MSI and Gigabyte, which I'd love to be using for their BIOS overclocking features.
I've seen a few Parts/Repair boards sell for around $50 with socket bent pins and such. It's always a risk buying those but I've fixed and flipped a few dead boards and made a profit, and if I could do the same for something like an ASUS Sabertooth X58, that would be sweet!
 

bhogervorst

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Yeah you're certainly right in terms of the purpose of this thread which was to achieve high performance for $100 or less. I see that the W3500 series is the best for that now, and that it is possible. For me personally though, the extra cores are very worth while and I've already bought into them so there's no going back.

And DANG, that's the EVGA board i've been seeing for $1200 on eBay. I legitimately thought that was one of those fake scams but I see now what it's all about.
 

bhogervorst

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I got my W3680 in the mail today. I got it installed with absolutely no issues or surprises.
I'll try and keep my summary as organized and concise as possible for other readers.

Overclocking:
I loaded up ThrottleStop and was greeted by unlocked settings, YAY! I promptly jacked the power limits to 200W and 200A respectively for good measure. I also disabled all options except SpeedStep. I read the ThrottleStop guide and it seems like most of the other options don't apply to my platform.

I want to also mention that I already had Intel XTU installed and I decided to see what it could do, knowing that people have said it's incompatible with 1366 (I think?). The sliders for power limits are unlocked and do allow adjustments, as does the multiplier slider. I may play around with this too as i'm having issues getting ThrottleStop to enable my overclock at boot.

Overclock Results:
I was able to achieve a stable 4GHz overclock on all cores, with 2 cores boosting up to 4.13GHz. The system was unstable on 4.13GHz on all cores, obviously because of lack of ability to adjust voltage, which is the limiting factor here it seems. I did see the CPU boosting to 4.13GHz in single-threaded applications so my 2 core 4.13GHz settings weren't completely in vain.

Benchmarks:
My original system upgrade goal was going to be the Ryzen 5 1600, so I benched it against my system in CPU-Z and it was remarkably close. Multicore for the R5 was 364/3108 and for my W3680 it was 322/2668. Userbench ranked me in the 69th Percentile, mostly for single core performance. In Cinebench R15 it scored 860cb for multi-core which is good. According to this chart, my CPU beats a 4790k, 4770k, 6700k, R5 1500X, and a 7700k, all at stock speeds though of course. At 115cb for Single Core, the CPU is showing it's age, even overclocked, but that's still acceptable.

Results/Validations:
Userbench: http://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/9473347
CPU-z: https://valid.x86.fr/paqipl, 322 multi/2668 single
Cinebench: 862 multi/115 single
If there are any other benchmarks anyone would like me to test, I'd be happy to do so.

Temps/Power usage:
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo with stock fan, 600W Corsair PSU
Power Usage: 350W for the whole system [1050Ti, 6 fans, 1 HDD, 1 SSD, 6 DIMMS]
Temps OC: 39*c at idle and 65*c under load (according to TS)

Price breakdown:
Here's a list of what I bought for my system, everything was used from eBay.

  • ■ Motherboard: $40.00
    ■ Intel Xeon W3680: $61.75
    ■ SATA3 PCIe card: $11.11
    ■ USB3.0 PCIe card: $8.97
    ■ 24-Pin extender: $3.99
Total: $125.82, a great price for a powerful machine like this one.

Conclusion:
Did I achieve my goal? Strictly speaking no. I spent more than $100 for this build. Could I have stayed under $100? Absolutely Yes. As william p suggested, buying a $25 W3570 Quad core instead of a Hexa core will bring the total down to an extremely low $75 if you buy your chip used on eBay. But I wanted the 6 cores and I think $125 is worth it for them, at least for me. I've finally sold my Athlon X4 860K which I ran at 4.5Ghz for many years along with it's motherboard for around $100 total, which mostly covered the upgrade costs. I'm sad to see it go but it was a good upgrade and I've accomplished what I came here to do.

As for the center of the project, the HP Z400 motherboard, It's a great board and I'd recommend it for users trying to build in a standard modern ATX case like me. My main daily frustrations with it are it's lack of compatibility with my keyboard (anything outside Windows doesn't work unless using an OEM keyboard), the annoying errors at boot and it's finicky reliability at times. I've fixed the lack of USB3.0 with the PCIe card but the SATA3 card was a flop. Don't buy cheap SATA cards EVER, ended up just using onboard SATA2 which is slow but works.
Otherwise, it's a bargain considering prices for anything non-OEM. I might consider buying a nicer 1366 board later on but this will do the job for now. Would recommend.

I'll hopefully be hopping over to the ThrottleStop forum to post my results and get Z400 awareness out there a little more.
Hopefully someone gets some use out of my enormous forum posts here and my trial and error. I certainly learned a lot. Thanks for all the help guys.

- Bhogervorst
 

Draven35

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I'm running a Z400 here as my primary machine, kitted out with 24 GB and the 3680 hex-core. I also have 12 GB of RAM and a x5560 sittign in boxes from earlier configs. It may not be the latest and greatest but these off-lease HPs are a good was to get some decent performance for not much money. My second machine is actually an off-lease z600 with 2x X5650s and 48 GB. The Z420 and Z620 have now reached the price point that I originally bought these machines at.